Protests seen, but not heard

Chicago execs mostly dismiss Occupy demonstrators as misguided, at best

More than 100 Occupy Chicago protesters have been arrested in two different demonstrations.

Occupy Wall Street is getting attention in the media and nods from struggling Americans for hurling brickbats at the nation's wealthy. In Chicago's C suites, however, many executives are dismissing or ignoring the populist movement and its nebulous anti-business agenda.

Says venture capitalist Michael Ferro, CEO of Chicago-based Merrick Ventures LLC: “It's just a bunch of good-hearted kids who don't have all their facts right.”

The protests against America's richest 1%—those with annual incomes of at least $506,000—have tapped into a smoldering rage after the financial crisis of the 2000s cost millions of people their jobs and homes, while banks were bailed out and financiers continued to reap fortunes.

“I understand why people are upset,” Morningstar Inc. CEO Joe Mansueto says. “It's less clear what to do about it.”

After popping up in Manhattan in September, the demonstrations spread to Chicago and across the U.S. In many cities, they have escalated occasionally into police confrontations and mass arrests. In Chicago, more than 100 people were arrested in two different demonstrations, while police broke up protests last week in Atlanta and Oakland, Calif.

“It's certainly got legs,” says one sympathetic chief executive, Peter Thompson of Perkins Investment Management LLC in Chicago; he's a grandson and nephew of former mayors named Daley. “Smart business people should be more open and curious about these issues because there's a level of frustration in a growing percentage of the population that we should be tuned in to.”

But if demonstrators are upset by the misfortunes of the middle class, they shouldn't take it out on business leaders, those leaders say.

Though Occupy Chicago protesters have swelled into the thousands during weekend rallies, their weekday numbers are hardly robust at their encampment in the LaSalle Street canyon, where white sawhorses guard the façade of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

“You've got to start someplace, I guess,” says Robert Anderson, 66, a retired school administrator who served in Vietnam after protesting the war in the 1960s. Holding a sign reading “Tax the 1%,” he says, “I feel bad for kids who have no future to look forward to. We have no representative government.”

"The banks, they crashed the economy, and they got away with it," says Occupy Chicago protester Lev Hirschhorn, an organizer for Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation. Photo: Stephen J. Serio

Another protester, Lev Hirschhorn, graduated last spring from Brandeis University with an American studies degree and came to Chicago two months ago as an organizer for the community activist group Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation. “The banks, they crashed the economy, and they got away with it,” he says.

But Rebel Cole, a DePaul University professor of finance, says of the phenomenon, “It's almost like vaudeville,” adding, “It's just not a big issue for corporate America right now.”

That could change. Some business leaders consider the movement left-wing, unfocused and temporary. But other causes were widely dismissed before coalescing into a political force. Case in point: the Tea Party.

“My guess is, it will blow over—but who knows?” says Paul Purcell, CEO of financial firm Robert W. Baird & Co. “My only hope is that it stays peaceful.”

Many corporate chiefs won't comment for fear of being targeted, says lawyer Ty Fahner, president of the Commercial Club of Chicago and its Civic Committee. “Who the hell would want to draw a response from the characters who are bothering them?” he says. “I wouldn't want to talk about it, and I don't know anybody who would.”